A Niagara-on-the-Lake teenager is Ontario’s fastest 15-year-old swimmer.
Peyton Leigh is the provincial high point winner, having won four gold, a silver and a bronze medal in this past season’s competitions. She is ranked first in the province for the 800-metre freestyle and the 200-metre butterfly.
When Peyton started her season last year, her only goal was to make the qualifying time to get into Eastern Canadian Championships, held in Windsor last March. She ended up doing that, and much more.
In May, 2024, Peyton will join other swimmers from across the country to swim at the Olympic Qualifying Trials in Montreal.
“It was a big shock. I was really happy about that,” she said.
Peyton lives in Garrison Village, and has been swimming all of her life. She started with private backyard swimming lessons and joined the Garden City Aquatic Club at the age of five. She became competitive three years later. After bouncing around with membership in a few different clubs, last year Peyton joined Brock Niagara Aquatics (BNA), with a coach new to the club, and to Peyton, Dave Ling.
“When Dave came this year it was really good for me. He taught me so many things, like how to perfect my stroke, how to gain speed, and he just motivates me,” said Peyton, who is part of the elite Diamonds squad at BNA, and swims with varsity athletes.
Ling, Brock University’s head swim coach, participated in two Canadian Olympic Swimming Trials and represented Canada at the 2000 FINA World Open Water Swimming Championships in Hawaii.
At the winter provincials held in Toronto, Ling told her that attaining a time to allow her to compete at the Olympic Trials is possible if she went out and gave it her all. “I ended up making my first Olympic trial time that night. It was really exciting. I didn't go into that race in the morning expecting to even get close to that.”
Peyton races everything from the 200 to 800 metre freestyle (front crawl), and the 200 metre butterfly. “I prefer distance races over sprints.” What drives Peyton over the course of a race is “the feeling I get when I get going, getting into a rhythm.”
In a long-course pool like Brock’s, 800 metres is 16 laps.
Most of Peyton’s swims have been at the Toronto Pan Am Center, which, according to Peyton, is known as the fastest pool in Canada because multiple records have been broken in it. “I got to see Summer McIntosh break the world's record, which is really cool,” said Peyton. McIntosh is the current world record holder in the women's 400 metre individual medley.
Peyton’s mother, Christi Leigh, said that Peyton has “always been good. A little bit better than average. People were always like, ‘wow,’ when she was so little and had mastered the butterfly stroke.”
Christi, a teacher at St. Michael Catholic School in Virgil, said “this year was the biggest jump, in terms of progress towards something more than we actually thought could ever be happening with the new coach.”
Peyton’s training schedule doesn’t leave much time for the 15 year-old to socialize with friends. She trains in the pool eight times a week, 20 hours in total. She trains twice on Monday, once each Tuesday through Thursday, twice Friday and once on Saturday. A pool session generally takes anywhere from two to two and a half hours.
“I also do dry land training three times a week out of the Brock Performance centre,” she added.
Peyton’s swim season was 11 months long. “It was the longest season I've had in my swimming career,” she said. “I surprised myself.”
Christi says that while her daughter “doesn't do a lot outside of swimming and school,” she has really close friendships with people both inside and outside of the swim world.
“Sometimes at night, all my friends will go to football games and stuff, and I won't go because I have practice,” said Peyton. But at school, I became friends with this group of girls who are also really athletic and we can relate to each other.”
“The environment I swim in is very important to me. Being at practice with people who have fun and are passionate about the sport helps me be a better athlete, and I am so lucky to have teammates who allow me to push myself everyday,” said Peyton.
Leigh acknowledges that swimming is a costly sport, as her mom, and dad, retired police officer Jimmy Leigh, nod in the background.
It costs nearly $5,000 to use the pool and training room facilities at Brock. Training suits, of which Peyton currently has eight, are about $90 each, and race suits cost anywhere from $400 to $600. The race suits are very thin, fit tightly to the skin, and rip easily. All suits last only one season, due to wear and tear, and swimmer growth.
Peyton’s 13 year-old sister, Georgia, also swims for Brock Niagara Aquatics, on the Gold team.
“But there are other expenses on top of that,” said Christi. “You have to pay to race, you have to pay to get there. You need a hotel, and then there are coaching expenses.”
“I'm applying for a $500 scholarship right now from Swim Ontario,” said Peyton, who works part-time at Seaway Farms while maintaining an honours average at Holy Cross Secondary School.
She has a few more weeks to relax before embarking on a new swim season and Grade 10. She will continue to work with Ling and her Diamonds team at the Brock pool.
“Right now the goal is to just keep getting better and faster and my coach, Dave Ling and I will communicate along the way and try to achieve new best times.”
